From: ahoward <ahoward@...>
Date: 2003-06-02T14:03:03+09:00
Subject: Re: Interactive programming

On Mon, 1 Jun 2003, Jason Watkins wrote:

> Just out of curiousity, how often do you find yourself:
>
> 1.) Write ruby in the interactive interpreter
> 2.) Write ruby in files, occasionally calling the interpreter from a shell
>     to test your code

i always have an irb window open, but code in files (sometimes i even have
tests! ;-) )

mostly i do stuff like this in the irb window:

  > require 'postgres'
  > PGConn.new # oops error
  > PGconn.new # ah yes - that's how it's spelled

also i often do this

  > require 'rbtree'
  > (RBTree.new.methods - Object.new.methods).sort

or

  > object.methods
  > object.constants

or

  > class Foo; FOO = 42; end
  > class Bar < Foo; end
  > Bar::FOO # does this work?

or sometimes

  > require 'class_in_progress'
  > ClassInProgress.method args # repeat these two many times...

  instead of using the 'if $0 == __FILE__' bit...

you get the idea.  i also do a lot of database manipulate in irb instead of
the native rdbms shell...

in summary - i love irb.

-a
--
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  | Ara Howard
  | NOAA Forecast Systems Laboratory
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